The toxxes are up and your ballz are down on the chopping block so let's get this party started.

SEBMOJO and EXMOND have declared a partnership for brawling against SH.

Here's yo prompt Seb and Exm

C'MON AND SLAM

Seb, you're going to begin a story. Word limit 500. You're not going to finish it, just gonna get the party started. The story can be about anything in any genre save all the usual lovely stuff (Erotica, Fanfic, ect). Once it's done, Exmond, you're going to finish his story with a 500-word limit. You two can work together behind the scenes, planning, detailing, but the two of you must write and submit your entries alone.

AND WELCOME TO THE JAM

I just gave a serious handicap to Seb and Exm, they could easily botch this up and guarantee a Nina Tucker situation out of their story so SH you're getting something hard to work with too. Your prompt SH, is to write a story involving Basketball and magic. Your challenge to make it as dead serious as possible. So in contrast to the SPACE JAM going on in this post, you gotta cut all ties with the Looney Tunes/NBA jerkoff session when you do up your story. MAKE IT SERIOUS. MAKE IT DEADLY loving SERIOUS. Word limit 1000.

The body horror in this piece is pretty strong, and the central premise of cloacal surgery as commentary on a societal obsession with achieving bodily perfection, cheating death, etc, through surgical means is an interesting enough hook. Where this story fails, however, is in its lack of focus: it starts a lot of ideas, but leaves them hanging as fragments of unexplored potential. As an example of what I mean here, Brad’s distaste for his aging and sagging body is established from the get-go, and the obsession with the removal of body hair was quite subtly done -- but once he’s got a cloaca, there’s almost no exploration of the physicality of his body, and the story focuses instead on his youthful invigoration that he experiences as a result of the surgery. The paint on the new cloaca is barely dry before the story gets to bone hollowing and Lester’s demise, at which point we see Brad re-entering the cycle -- but it’s a *lot* of plot, and very little character development.

You also hand-wave through a lot of character motivation: sure, Brad doesn’t like the fact that he’s getting old, and maybe isn’t super comfortable with his junk. But it’s a *bit* of a jump from there to “I would like to combine all of my excretory and reproductive functions into a new multipurpose out-box”, and Brad is awfully quick to buy into Lester’s justifications for getting a cloaca installed. Most dudes, in my experience, are pretty attached to the old todger, and it’s stretching credulity to think that two gym buddies would happen to both be keen on the same drastic piece of surgery. The fundamental core of effective body horror is its believability: we need to be swept up in the character’s motivation, so that once the ball gets rolling we can no longer look away. The moment I can say “what? That’s some bullshit right there”, the story falls. And when you’ve got two dudes basically saying “yeah, gently caress weiners, amirite”, that spikes the old BS-meter.

I’m also lukewarm on the religious subtext here: from the title, the pontification of the surgeon, etc, I’m guessing that on some level the modification towards being birdlike might be intended as a general aspiration towards becoming angelic, and that body modification in pursuit of perfection can be interpreted as an attempt to become closer to God, blah blah blah. If that’s your angle, it’s fine (if a little heavy-handed), but you need to commit way harder to that pretense than you do here. Personally, I’d get rid of it and focus on the cloacas.

So, there’s a lot of potential here, but very little of it is actually realized. Pick the ideas that are most important here, toss the rest, and focus on putting some real character-driven meat into the story.

Ironic Twist // LOVELYBAD
OK, I’ve slogged through this story a bunch of times now, trying to work out what the actual gently caress is going on here, and I feel like I’m only marginally closer to an answer after my fifth read than I was after the first. The use of language is really quite lovely throughout, and the imagery is certainly evocative, but I cannot for the loving life of me work out what the hell it’s trying to be beyond that. There are hints at an emotional core lurking waaaaaay under the surface, but it’s obfuscated with so many layers of (pretty) bullshit that trying to find the thread of this story is like digging out an ingrown hair. And the more I dig, the less certain I am that it’s really down there: after five reads of this thing, I’m beginning to suspect that I’m being played for a sap, and that there’s no treasure to be found down there. Who knows, maybe I just need go back and read it a sixth, or a sixteenth time, but right now all I’m taking away from it is a weird trip pawing at ungraspable significance.

areyoucontagious // Echidna
This needs a bit more time in the oven, I think -- the research inspiration for the story stands out like raw batter inside a cake. I don’t think that, at this point, anybody really needs an advertisement for Homo Deus, and the essential core of the narrative is basic and familiar enough that I think you can get your point across just fine without name dropping Yuval Noah Harari. The various references to CRISPR-Cas9 and snips and so on end up in an uncanny valley: it feels like the story is working very hard to establish its scientific bona fides, but it’s not clear for whose benefit this is intended. If I already know about this stuff, then my response is going to be “good job, you too have read a book”. If I don’t, I’m certainly not going to learn it from this story -- about the best it’s going to do is send me to the Wikipedia page on CRISPR, assuming that I care enough. And therein lies the rub: there’s not enough actual fiction craft in here to make a reader care, because the characters are flat, their motivations feel store-bought, and you can see the ending coming from a mile away.

SurreptitiousMuffin // g=Gm/r^2
OK, first of all, you’ve got your physics wrong, and badly. g=Gm/r^2 is not the equation for G-force, it’s an equation that describes the gravitational acceleration experienced by a body (say, a spaceman) at a distance r from an object with mass m (r is not the size of the object, but the distance from the center of mass at which that acceleration is experienced). The further that spaceman gets away from that mass m (i.e. the bigger r gets) the *smaller* g gets. When people talk about G-forces, they’re usually talking about when human bodies experience an acceleration that is greater than the gravitational pull at the earth’s surface, like when a human in an airplane performs a tight loop. The G-forces that a spaceman would feel on re-entry have nothing to do with the titular equation of this story, but are instead due to atmospheric drag acting on a body moving with high velocity into a fluid medium.

Then there’s the formatting, the physical structure of the piece. It’s eye-catching, sure, but hosed if I can work out what the relevance of the conceit is to the narrative that’s being established. It does give it a lyrical quality, and I’ll concede that that works well at a few points, but the inconsistency of its application through the piece feels lazy. And ultimately, after a couple reads, the formatting contributes less and less until finally it just feels like a pretentious and self-indulgent gimmick.

Setting those issues to the side, the use of language is very pretty and poetic (aside from a few atrocious missteps like “bonelike hand”), but there’s really no meat on this story, no substance to speak of. It aims to dazzle with its verbiage, but in the end the atmosphere is pretty thin.

cptn_dr // Solitude’s Not For Everyone
This really isn’t that bad; it’s mostly just unfocused and unsure of what it wants to accomplish. There are a lot of ideas in here, but almost none of them are explored with any real interest, such that the final result is a pile of worldbuilding and window-dressing capped with a dud of punchline. At a high level, it’s missing a coherent character arc and a plot .Beyond that, it’s disjointed: in the whole sequence leading up to Kerrigan docking with Kirkwood’s station, nothing happens that in any way colours the interaction between these men.

From a craft perspective, the story opens with alarms going off, and then murders what little momentum that opening provides by diving into a hierarchy of Kerrigan’s thought process before going into a backstory that ultimately has zero relevance to the rest of the story. The stakes feel low throughout the early section, because aside from the alarms there’s no other indication of danger -- and the idea that this poor bastard would have to take this elaborate and roundabout journey through all of the stages of anxiety only to discover that the problem is that there’s a space station nearby seems ludicrous. Also, for that matter, given that Kirkwood was looking for peace and quiet, it seems like choosing to plant his space station in the direct line between Luna and Planet Whocares wasn’t the greatest idea?

It seems like the story you want to tell is one about how solitude affects people, so just focus on that. You’ve got Kerrigan, who is alone but doesn’t like it, and Kirkwood, who is alone and seems rather pleased with it. Screw the alarms and dumb punchlines, and make the characters do something interesting. Also, maybe give them names that aren’t so similar to one another.

Thranguy // Agency
This feels a bit like a mash-up of Blade Runner and Slaughterhouse 5, which is unfortunately a way more awesome concept than the story that emerges. For a piece that’s so heavily character-driven, the motivations are baffling obtuse. I mean, I get that you’re going for a play on free will and agency (the title is a bit of an eye-roller in retrospect), but even in that context there’s no clear indication why our protagonist willingly goes along with this job (which seems to be “kill aliens for apparently no reason”) or why an advanced intelligence would agree to this setup (they seem interested in grooming humans for ascendence to “civilization”, but exactly how does getting themselves lit up in an off-brand Voight-Kampff advance this goal?). Ultimately, it makes for a story that, much like Blade Runner 2049, feels like it’s asking all kinds of deep and portentous chin-scratching questions, but seems kind of dumb when you stop and think about it for a minute.

Yoruichi // Braaaaaains
I found this to be an incoherent mess of a story. The characters are paper-thin, and the dialogue between them (especially the initial exchange between Mae and Jared) reads like low-budget Markov bots bouncing random sentences off of one another. And you’ve got to be loving kidding me with poo poo like “...in fond exasperation at Jared’s perpetual lackadaisicalness”. The whole “harboring a secret love that is finally expressed at the moment of death” thing is about as basic a storyline as they get, and slapping a coat of zombie on a story is just about the cheapest punch-up there is -- this should be an easy knock out of the park, which makes the fact that the characters spend the whole story tripping over their own narrative shoelaces a little baffling.

ThirdEmperor // The Friendly Machine
I wanted to like this story more than I did -- I think the premise is pretty solid, and having what seems like a school group of enthusiastic children watching as someone gets slowly microplaned by a surgical robot is delightfully twisted. But there’s a lot of exposition and elliptical world-building that doesn’t feel like it goes much of anywhere -- like, for example, the whole blue housing ticket system, which never felt clearly explained. Cynthia’s hostility towards Momma Aphouse doesn’t feel earned, because it’s never particularly clear as to why her hackles are so raised towards this particular woman in the first place. And, for that matter: why exactly are all of these people here in the observation room, anyway? All of this is stuff that should be reasonably simple to flesh out, but as it is there’s so much legwork left as an exercise for the reader that it makes a light-feeling story a bit of a slog to get through.

Obliterati // The Last Shot of the War
I’m really not a fan of war fiction, so I bounced off of this pretty hard. I also had a rough time with all of the time jumps back and forth, and by the time I had it all straight I found I had zero loving idea as to what was motivating any of these characters. Like, I don’t see how their war history was in any way relevant to their future world with minesweeping robots, or what Sakamoto was even doing returning to the island in the first place. And what exactly is Sakamoto trying to accomplish by blowing himself and Takamura up at the end, besides ending the story with an explosion?

Tyrannosaurus // Brutus, thou sleep’st. Awake, and see thyself.
For the most part, I dig this pretty well. The interweaving of Julius Caesar with the story was nicely done, but I think I could have done with a bit more exploration of who the Father was, and what motivated the clones to act on their murderous impulses. Like, initially I was thinking that it kind of parallels the motivations of Brutus et al, in that the clones are murdering the father to protect the glory of Rome (in this case, to prevent themselves from being destroyed when the colonists arrive), but that breaks down because they didn’t know that they were clones until they killed Father and got the infodump from Mother, and so they only got the patricidal motivation after they’d done the deed. Continuing on that front, I wanted a better sense of who this Father was, or what it was -- with the whole consuming the bodies of the clones, I initially thought it was some kind of recycling machine / cloning vat, but then if Father was killed (destroyed?) I’m not sure how their propagation plan works. Also, why *did* they give the clones Shakespeare?

Uranium Phoenix // The Wheel Turns
I like the concept you’ve got going here, and I enjoyed the gentle poignance of the idea of this robot struggling to find a thread of coherent experience through its cycle of rebirth. I was also grateful for a story that actually made some reasonable sense and was pretty clear from the get-go with regards to what it was about thematically. All that said, though, the dialogue felt like it sagged throughout, and the story relied a little too much on the dialogue to provide the worldbuilding details (and yes, I’m aware that this is a bit loving rich given the story that I submitted, but whatevs). I felt like the story ended a little early for me -- I felt like I really wanted to see what ended up happening with Admat-24, but I guess it’s generally best to get out early and leave ‘em wanting more.

People worked out how to get to space easily ages ago; unfortunately it was full of gently caress all. So these days, mostly, they didn’t bother.

It bothered me.

I used to hoverboard down to the spaceport and watch the weekly cargo shuttles lift to the old Moon colony. Each one gave me a faint, sharp pain as it cleared the surface and arced for orbit, like it was taking some part of me with it.

That’s where I met Nigel, on the side of the hill overlooking the port. He was nice, ridiculously nerdy, but nice. The fat, awkward, stuttery type. I’d share my soup with him, unscrewing the mug of my mum’s old brown thermos and oohing with him at the bright plumes of drive flame. I didn’t like him like he liked me, but his zeal for space was charming.

I don’t think I led him on, or was unkind, or unfair, apart from maybe one time.

Nigel had plans. He wanted to refurb an old Azimuth ‘39er, one of the inter-station yachts they’d built in great numbers back when they thought space was going to be a huge deal.

“I got some ma-ma-money from when my folks… folks died,” he said, blinking furiously. He had a thermal blanket, vacuum-rated, and it was over both of our knees. “I’ve been studying their maintenance and operation. Their range is p-p-potentially enormous!”

I smiled, encouraging him. Then I frowned. “They’re one seaters, aren’t they?”

He nodded. “Everything gets recycled!”

“Everything?” I said, and took a sip from my thermos. “Peeeelicious.”

He nodded again, then blushed as I laughed.

I got my diagnosis a few months after that; it turned out that pain wasn’t just a non-specific longing for the deep black void of space. I’d wake up sweating, just disgusting amounts of sweat pouring off me, with the understanding that the number of breaths I had left was a pure and precise number.

I still went down to meet Nigel for the scheduled launches, but each lift-off seemed to dig a little more out of me. I could feel the black void inside me, the impossible distance growing, the number shrinking.

I didn’t tell him I was going to die until after he asked me out (awkwardly). I waited until after we’d kissed (also awkward), and after we’d hosed our one and only time (surprisingly decent).

But I told him what I wanted, then, lying there in the park on his vacuum-rated thermal blanket, and he said he’d do it. I could see the light in his eyes and I knew it would happen.

Everything is going well, when suddenly it isn’t. Alarms ring out, displays flash red and metal groans. I have clambered into my space suit when the groan turns into a scream of agony, and I am slammed into a bulkhead. I see stars, and then blackness.

I awaken in my scarlet-lit tomb, out of reach of anyone, and I wonder if my situation has ever changed. I sit in the pilot’s chair and the displays move to cocoon me in a shell of information.

Diagnostics: The ship is spinning off course and hull integrity is compromised. Cause: Meteor collision with shuttle. Life-threatening issues: Air is leaking out into space. Outcome: Terminal. Nothing to be done.

No, wrong. There is one thing to be done.

Floating in the shuttle, spinning in the escaping air, is a cylinder. A simple thing, coloured with an earthy brown, and nothing else. I grab it and feel its weight.

Another display flickers and the hissing slows to a stop. As the last bit of air leaves the shuttle I sit there, in the silent endless void, and hold onto you. I let out labored, limited breaths as I cry. The suit's readouts tell me that Jupiter is a hundred million miles away. Life is unfair. Screw it. I stand up, open the airlock and jump out into space.

I check my spacesuit, fifteen minutes of air left. Fifteen minutes to do one last thing. Fifteen minutes to say goodbye. I hold onto the thermos in gloved clumsy hands and look at the stars.

We were in the park, our first date, and the moonlight lit your face. “I want to go there,” you said, pointing at Jupiter in the sky. “One day, I'll be dancing on Jupiter.”

I laughed, stupidly, and looked over at you. “I’ll t-t-take you there.”

Five minutes of air left, my spacesuit warns. Just enough time. I feather the maneuvering jets until the suit's readout verifies our course. Jupiter: 20 years away. I twist open the thermos and spread your ashes around me, and I can almost feel your embrace. The planets continue to dance on their never-ending orbits, the stars continue to shine cold points of light that warm my heart, and the silence forms upon me like a comforting blanket.

Once we reach there my body will burn up in atmosphere, and our motes will dance free, together again, on the hot winds of Jupiter.

I have 500,000 hairs. I’ve counted them all, sometimes. I have defecated roughly 10,000 times in my life, my brother has counted those. I have an affinity for cats, squirrelies, frogs, tree, birds, mice, video games, commas, bananas, birthday cake, typewriters, paint brushes, Steven Spielberg films (except for Toy Story of course), boiling water, frozen water, salted water, water with olive oil in it, lentils, goats, goat meat, magic tricks, details, coupons, receipts, toilet paper, receipts that have documented my toilet paper purchases, literary fiction, toast, momentum, inertia, molecules, cells, biomes, pictures without frames, frames without pictures, ghosts, ghouls, fiends, hobgoblins, Band-Aids, lunchables, dinette sets, patio furniture, molehills, mountains being mistaken for molehills, taxis, tacos, beefcheek, canaries, crab legs, emojis (only when I'm in a fun mood), pornography, high speed police car chases, that thing that happens when you forget to clean out your toaster like you should every week and so when you go and try and heat up a bagel you're like “what is that smell? Nothing about this bagel even comes close to resembling strawberries and yet it smells like burning fruit in my kitchen”, bran muffins, itchy socks, rings, coins, points, tickets, plastic bags, paper bags, metal bags, baggie bags, laptops, witches, green, yellow, blue, purple, chartreuse, winking, blinking, inking, swooping, rapping, crapping, defiling diners, occupying wall street, lollipops, plugging things in, baby-proofing the universe, frying up some waffle irons, adjusting table tennis expectations, helping obese earthworms achieve a healthful worm/life balance, impersonating Maya Angelou, donating my time to a good cause, syphoning jet fuel from cacti, educating the population on the various merits of reanimating professors who died the month before their university granted them tenure, cruising around in a 87’ Malibu without a care in the world (except for whether or not I disappointed my father and if he’s quietly judging me on my lifestyle choices. It’s not that he ever acts that way, but sometimes, I can just tell), grooving, free wheeling, showboating, celebrating my defeats, suffering my victories, playing with my yoyo (not a euphemism), playing with my yoyo (definitely a euphemism), highlighting my thoughts with orange highlighters, highlighting my emotions with pink highlighters, flirting with the premise that sexuality is not binary, defending that my sexuality is decidedly singular, punching cephalopods into existence, shouting my lungs out into a petri to monitor the impact of oxygenation on human tissue, eating just one potato chip in defiance of marketing campaigns, running headfirst into a great white shark, skinning potatoes until they cry, civil war rentrapments, and daydreaming.

Hopefully, now, you know a bit about me.

So let’s continue.

But wait, you know what I like.

You don’t know what I dislike.

Racial constructs, being heartbroken by penpals, hathead. That’s about it.

So what is it to write a story?

Some would say that the writing of a story is merely the mushing of words together.

I’d largely agree with that definition.

Except.

Aren’t we all just mushing everything together all of the time?

You’re only here because your parents mushed something together.

Their genitals, of course.

We’re all products of various mushed together genitals.

And accordingly, all of our actions are the result of mushed together ideas.

Friendships are mushed together people.

Family is mushed together obligations.

Music is mushed together notes.

Movies are mushed together pictures.

Pictures are mushed together sources of light and darkness.

Light and darkness are mushed together perceptions.

Perceptions are mushed together truths.

Truth is mushed together relative understanding.

So what do we understand?

I don’t know what I understand, but I do know what I want you to understand.

I want you to read this and understand.

I want you to understand: I am merely a product of mushed together entities and no matter what I do, that reality is one that I cannot escape, nor do I want to. I hope that in writing this you’ll understand my ideas but also, you’ll come to realize that my overall worth as a human can be likened to a grain of sand in a sandbag whose purpose is solely to rest on a button that, when pushed, provides power--but not enough power-- to a miniature LED light bulb that could provide a light source to 1 cubic inch of space. In case the point I put on that sentiment is so sharp that it frightened you, I’ll just spell it out: I am not worth much. Do you understand? Seriously, I’m asking you now. Say your answer out loud. Did you? Did you try? Did you listen to me when I asked you to do that? If you did, how was that experience? Did you go grow? Did you learn something about yourself? If so, what? Say that out loud now too. Or maybe you did none of those things. Why would you? After all, I just told you what I was worth. Why would you follow the orders from a worthless trash heap of a person. And if that’s the case. Why am I even trying to tell my story? If writing is the suggestion of imagery in another’s mind, and I believe that to be one of the many things writing is, than isn’t this is a pointless endeavor. I suppose it is, and you know what?

These were a couple of contenders I tell you whut but the game is over and there can only be one(or two)to take home the gas planet basketball signed by Charles Barkley.

First some comments, I'll have scanned crits for you later.

On SH's "The No One Girl and the Mouth of Hell This reads like a creation myth, or the tribalistic legend of a great warrior, or as the origin of Basketball itself. The latter was what I was gathering from initial reads as you name drop Basketballers of Terra Firma and other very local sportsball terms. There is no elder telling the story to youngsters ala Princess Bride or Over Zealous coach reving up his team with a very far fetched tale. There is the story of a woman rebelling against hell with the sun itself but no reason to name drop NBA Allstars. The effect this story left was very passable as I was sensing some payoff that established WHY this story was being told. I kept waiting for the Fable but got what felt like a narrator passing along a tale to no one in particular.

I recommend installing framing for the Myth or to drop the NBA lookathats entirely. You could've left out all mentions of Lebron and Jordan and free throws ect and this still would've been a basketball story. You tell it with grabbing the sun and dodging demons, slamming solar radiance through a hoop in the ground: that's all the basketball you needed.

I loved the story nonetheless. Seeing Basketball become a tale of Ascended Vengeance against Hell was hella awesome! Totally keep this one. It's fun.

On Sebmojo's "The Oberth Manoeuvre".

This is the Space missing from the Jam, props for that.

This tale felt unusual and sometimes unexpected. I like the protagonist, his laissez faire attitude towards the disappointment of space travel, his kindness towards his friend and lover, and towards his own sexuality is intriguing. Doubleplus points for making someone who I wanted to hear more from. The death knocking at this door is the one thing that gets him actually desiring something even if its post-mortem. That said, you're a bit vague on the world at large and I wanted to know more about why Space was a dead end for Humanity (being full of "gently caress-all" is vague. I don't understand what "gently caress-all" is supposed to be or not be). It sounds appropriate coming from your protagonist but it leaves my impression of the setting stilted. Also, why is going to space his last request? I get that it's all disappointing for humanity but I wanted more from the main guy (I don't think you or Exmond gave him a name) of why space travel would be important to HIM.

On Exmond's "The Oberth Manoeuvre pt. 2"

Nigel has been introduced. I suddenly am IN space with Nigel but it starts with a really really terribly cliche line "Everything is going well when suddenly it isn’t." that was hard to take after getting invested with the events so far. Also, while Seb's unnamed guy has a whole lot in his head we're getting material from, I don't much of that from Nigel. His feelings and emotions are last priority with describing his sudden space trip and the things that go wrong in bland uninteresting detail.

That said, if you did indeed mean to make the story so sappy and melodramatic on account of the change of perspectives (which btw is an awesome choice to make in dividing your parts, KUDOS) because we're looking at the world through Nigel now, I dig it. But I want to dig it more. I want more of Nigel and less setting or a thick second of Nigel and a setting that interacts WITH him rather than at him.

So, doing some hard thinking, while SH is better written as a whole, it feels like the filling without the twinkie. I'm seeing white creamy stuff and I don't know to make of it.

Seb and Exmond, you both had some issues establishing your world. Exmond you needed to take more time to make your half match the integrity of what came before it. In the end, I liked how you both went about parting the whole and the story feels far more framed and finished than Sh's.

The time is 00.03 but Seb and Exmond get a free throw in at the buzzer. The Cyborg and Chibi duel wins!

Henry was a literal manifestation of the metaphorical “ steel horse” in that he was a horse made of steel. A beast with glowing orange eyes and unglowing orange skin, he could fly and gallop over 60 kmph on a tank of pure 93 octane oats. He was legend in the towns of the west, that didn’t have established laws or customs but did appreciate tales of heroes, ever since he’d

He didn’t work well in the rain, because of rusting joints. Of course it had to be raining the day that the big bank robbery happened. Two thugs, George, Jacob, and the old man Gary Oldman rolled into town on a stagecoach pulled by normal horses.

Henry looked out from his water-proof stable and sighed in anger. Surely, given the opportunity, he could outperform those normal horses and pull that stagecoach fast. He could be the fastest get-away horse the criminal underworld had ever known, but no! He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t succumb to a life of easy money and crime. He made a vow right then and there that if he had a chance, he would talk to those horses and bring them to the side of good. Pulling a plow isn’t easy, but it’s honest, and honestness was next to godliness, in Henry’s point of view.

So then he turned his anger at the humans. The vile, corrupt men had corrupted the horeses and made them do their bidding. The horses were pawns, when they should have been knights.

Henry vowed right then and there to get out of the stable and stop the bank robbers, even if it meant frying his circuits. But first, he had a plan!

The ground was soft and supple from all the recent rains, so it did not scratch his fine metal exterior when he knelt down on the ground and began to pray. He prayed to God, to Horse God, and to the Centaur God, to cover all his basics. He asked them for the strength and courage to confront the bank robbers, and also for it to stop raining. To not appear self-serving in front of the three gods, he also asked for a new leg for Timmy, the young race horse who had recently broken his leg during a race and was now just waiting to be shot if he didn’t recover quickly.

Henry stood up and brushed the dust off of his knees that his whole body glinted in the sunlight. “Wait a minute, sunlight?!” He said in his head to himself. “How can there be sunlight if it is raining?” he looked around for a lighthouse that may be casting a beacon onto his knee, but they were in the middle of the steppes and near no oceans. He looked for a bonfire, maybe set alite by natives planning a war party, but the horizon was free of warriors. Finally, Henry looked toward heaven, and saw that the rain clouds has parted and the sun was shining ferociously through the hole. It was as if the three gods had put their fists together and punched a cloudhole straight into the sky.

“Yippee!” Henry screamed at the top of his speaker’s lungs, and he burst through the door of his stable. He was in the middle of the street, and down the street was one of the thugs, also in the middle of the street. His hands hovered near his gun belt and Henry smiled. “Fool, don’t know I’m the fastest horse in the west?”

“Ha ha, you don’t have guns,” said the thug, but before he could even cock one hammer Henry had run at him at full speed and knocked him to the ground. The guns went spiraling on the floor and skidded underneath some furniture so that the thug couldn’t get them. He lifted his head off the ground, but when he saw he was defeated, he passed out.

“One down, two more go” said Henry, as he took off running toward the bank. He passed the mercantile, where he would often go to buy blankets when it was cold, and the hardware store, where his shoes were fashioned from iron ingots. The town’s doctor was shaking out a rug and nodded to Henry as he raced passed on his way to the final showdown at the bank. Just when he got to the steps, the bank’s clock rang high noon.

The second thug stepped out of the bank with a shotgun in his hand. He threw the shotgun to the ground. “I don’t need this to defeat a single, solitary horse. I can do that with my hands tied behind my back, but instead I’ll use a knife.”

He pulled a knife out of his pants.

Henry couldn’t help but shiver a little bit, his body surging with adrenaloil. A well-placed knife attack could spell doom for his circuits.

But he wasn’t afraid. Even though he was afraid, he still squared up against the murderous thug.

“Actually I’ve never killed anybody before,” he said, “But tonight I think I will be feasting on horse steak!”

“ARG!” Henry suddenly cried from nowhere, and lunged forward at the robber.

“Unf,” said the robber as his stomach got hit by twenty tons of horse steel. “My pancreas!”

He too, seeing the folly of his ways, passed out.

“Now the only one left to stop is my arch-nemesis, Dr. Oldman!” said Henry.

He stormed into the bank where everybody was cowering in fear. “Run! You are free now!” The hostages escaped out the back while Dr. Oldman scowled. “You’ve ruined my plans, Henry Steelhorse, but you will not capture me and put me in the stocks, not today at least!”

“There is nothing you can do to stop me, I have you surrounded. There is no escape.”

“Ha!” said Dr. Oldman. “You’re forgetting one thing.”

“What is that?” asked Henry as he inched closer to the old man, ready to pounce on him like a leopard.

“You never knew who your father was, but it’s time you know. I created you!”

Henry felt all four of his horse knees buckle and his long face felt light. He stumbled and Dr. Oldman used the opportunity to slip out of the bank and onto the street. By the time Henry recomposed himself, he was alone in the bank.

He looked up at the sky and asked the three gods “Why?” Why did you not tell me?” he wondered to them, but they were silent. The clouds reformed over the sun and it started to rain. Henry was outside, and the rain splattered against his metal exterior and he closed his eyes, waiting for the smell of melting circuits. “I have been defeated,” he thought, as Dr. Oldman mounted the stagecoach and whipped at the horse hostages, and then he said aloud: “Just one last question, doctor.”

“Sure, I don’t see why not.”

“Why did you build me to melt in the rain? It is my greatest weakness.”

The Dr. Oldman laughed. “Oh silly horse, I only built you with one weakness: Love.” The evil scientist howled in laughter as he said “yee haw” and the stagecoach lept to life and tore out of town.

Henry looked around at his metal body. The water beaded up and ran off perfectly, and didn’t get into his fancy electronics at all. “Wow, this whole time, my own self-doubt had been limiting me, but no longer. Today I set things right!”

Henry started to chase after the stagecoach. Though he could run at 60mph, each of the two normal horses could run at 35 mph, giving the stagecoach a top speed of 70mph, which was faster than Henry had ever run. It was faster than anything had ever run. Still, he remembered the lessons of the past, how his own self-doubt had limited him in the face of adversity, and he pushed on.

He checked his heads-up display and saw he was past 60 miles per hour already. The normal horses looked behind themselves and Dr. Oldman panicked when he saw Henry gaining on him.

Henry pulled along side the horses, everybody doing 70 mph. To onlookers it probably looked like the blur of a bumblebee shooting past on its way to return pollen to the nest, but it was actually 3 horses and a man locked in a life-or-death struggle.

“That money doesn’t belong to you, and should go back to the orphans,” said Henry.

“I need this money to build a whole army of robot horses. Henry, you were just the prototype. Imagine all the mechanical horses, but with gatling guns. I see how you are running even faster than I ever dreamed possible, and in a way I am proud of you, but in another way I am disappointed, because your programming was never to do good, but to help with the ways of evil. I knew it was a mistake letting my daughter program you with love in your heart. I hoped you would love doing evil, but instead you care about normal people and normal horses.”

Henry nodded. “Yes, and it will be your downfall.” He stuck one of his orange metal legs through the spokes of the stagecoach and it flipped upside down. The dust cloud was the biggest that had ever been recorded in those parts, and when it settled all that was left was two normal horses, happy to be free, a busted up stagecoach, and a pile of every last stolen dollar. Dr. Oldman had vanished.

“Grrr!” said Henry. “I’ll get you next time!”

Sometimes, when Henry wasn’t paying attention and was just munching grass in the pasture, he would think he heard Dr. Oldman’s creepy laugh on the wind. He always stayed vigilant on the lookout for the mad scientist.

He went over to the normal horses to introduce them to a life of solving crimes instead of committing them, and he was surprised to see that they were both girl horses.

“Oh, sorry, you just ran so fast I assumed you were boys.”

“It’s ok,” said the girl horses as they flirted with their eyelashes. “You were so amazing, and you saved us.”

Regent B’Ork, canine and orc looked upon his lair. And admired he (indeed did he) all that he found there. You had a throne of cabbages fit for any king. You had an orcish court, a maid, jewels and any thing. But Regent B’Ork was melancholy, so he talked to his Dolphin ward. He asked him what to eat today, especially if its untoward. So the Dolphin said “Yessir yessir, I know what you can devour. I may be fish but even I know it’s the last living cauliflower.”

“Hooray hooray said Regent B’Ork and quested for the plant. He’d eat the cauliflower before someone else did or his meal they would supplant. But first he needed to find it thus he stuck his snout in thin air. And silently sniffed B’Ork did for its sulfurousy scent anywhere. Then of the location, he became aware. The water. The Wetness. The myst. The mystery. It was not dry place. The last cauliflower was behind a waterfall.

B’Ork went there and looked behind the waterfall. When you search for cauliflower, looking is a good protocol. B’Ork looked far behind it, yard upon yards. But he didn’t see the last cauliflower, he just saw its gaurds. Now the first gaurd was a boy, the second was a lady. And the lady was stronger because the boy gaurd was eighty.

The gaurds said “You can’t have it, the cauliflower is for us. And it’s the last one on this planet, of that you can trust. We won’t let you. Leave, or we can stop you.”

But Regent B’Ork, canine and orc had other ideas. He stood as solid as a tree is. Also he had his ward with him since the start: “Let’s concentrate on the eighty year old because I don’t hit pretty ladies. The male gaurd will be easy because he’s in his eighties.” So B’ork and the Dolphin ward beat him up easily, but it was still a little hard because B’Ork kept looking back at the pretty lady because she was easy on his eyes and he loved her by now. But the cauliflower was priority because that was his vow.

When B’Ork looked under the dead gaurd he did find a cauliflower. But the lady gaurd tried to stop him by using her power. Her power made B’Ork too dizzy to nosh. She almost beat him but then [/u]OH MY GOSH[/u]...the Dolphin jumped in the way. With the spell broken the lady’s skin began to flay. “NO! But I loved her!” That’s what B’Ork said. But nobody heard it, since the Dolphin died.

At least B’Ork had the cauliflower, and was ready to devour. At last he could be free, at least from melancholy. His stomach would be full, but the lady gaurd dying was still too awful. Now she had never been a Doubting Thomas. So B’Ork bent to her body and made it a promise. B’Ork said “I’ll never fight someone over food again. That’s what bad regents do, not the wisest of men." Her body. Breathless. The blood. The entrails. Too graphic to describe. Like a deaf person, now cured, hearing nails screech a chalkboard for the first time. They can’t convey the awful sound. Just this was an awful image instead.

B’Ork was forever changed, and that would be that. It was kind of like George R.R. Martin’s ‘taking the black’. Then he hopped on his dog and he road his dog back. Yet on the way to his lair, some old B’ork still remained. Rubbing his tummy sack he said his refrain: “gently caress u, Got mine!” He’d learned something, but didn’t want to commit. I mean he did but reliably he also didn’t. You can change a person but only on the surface if they won’t let it all through. Like Tertius signing his name in Romans 16:22. It’s superficial but the mark is still there. So the dog with B’Ork on it got back to his lair. What are some other ways this story could have ended?

Eye color: black!!!!
Preferred style of clothing: he like to wear long black jacket with jeans and a red tank top with bullets straps across

Piercings/tattoos/scars/etc: no he’s not a goth poser LOL he just liek black

Family (if any): he’s got a mom and dad who live far away, he keeps them safe by staying away from them

Spouse/significant other (if any): girlfriend named is Amy Ravenrose-Trinity she lives near his parents to keep her out of danger. She has pink hair and also dress like neo like in black but her tank top is pink. she’s kind of boring and annoying but neo likes her anyway because they look cool together in there black coats

Friends (if any): Trunks Briefs, hsi family is really rich and help Neo get to space to fight the machines, frieza, ect

Place of birth: um his mom

Current place of residence: he lives in Satan City but it’s a fake version made by machiens to trick N30n Darknet into turning to the dark side. but he knows

Favorite food: PIZZA

Least favorite food: peas!!!

Magical powers (if any): Neo can fly and move very fast, he can stop bullets and if they hit him they only take away some HP. neo also has can make energy blasts out of his hands after he learned from Trunks how to shoot ki blasts.

Number one wish: he wants to protect his family and girlfriend and Trunks and briefs family, he wants to make the world a safe place for all!!!!

6/16/2001

Name: NeOnDaRk

Nickname (if any): Darkstalker, Blackheart, Demonflame

Age: 542 but he looks about 18

Gender: male

Height: 5’9, looks 6’1 in his shoes, which are platforms, because he is also a rockstar when he’s not stalking the night

Weight: 150lbs built like a whip

Hair color: he dyes it back, partly to help him not be seen at night, partly because girls like rockstars with back hair and he has to keep his cool so no one guesses his secrets.

Eye color: a natural reddish color that make people wonder about him...

Preferred style of clothing: he wears black with a lot of neon, very cyber asthetic (not goth)

Piercings/tattoos/scars/etc: he has a big tattoo on his back of a design of the secret elder god that grants him immortality and gives him magic

Family (if any): his father is a demon who impragnated his mother 542 years ago. His mother was an angel and before the demonic influences could take hold of him as a baby, she blessed him with divine power and gave him the elder god tattoo on his back. When his father realize that the mother did this and his son would not be a demon like him, he came back and killed the mother. Luckily she was an angel and went back to heaven, but it left NeOnDaRk alone on earth.

Spouse/significant other (if any): he does not have a girlfriend for two reasons, one is that when people get close to him they see his dark side. two is, his manager of his rockstar career says he shouldn’t have a girlfriend so that his female fans will fantasize about him.

Friends (if any): he moves around from place to place too much to have friends, between being a rockstar and a nighttime crime fighter.

Place of birth: an old cathedral on a stormy night when the angels screamed

Current place of residence: he lives in a tourbus but the inside is full of swords and knives and masks and midevil looking gear. He has a bed where his manager wants him to have s*x with groupies but he never does because he feels that he should wait for someone who can get close and not be scared away...

Favorite food: he wants to deny it but he loves the taste of blood, he’s not a vampire but he has some demonic aspects and he has to fight the desire to taste human flesh.

Least favorite food: blood

Magical powers (if any): NeOnDark looks skinny and weak but he doesn’t need muscles because of his angel/demon magic. He can fall from huge heights and not be hurt and he can lift a person over his head. And throw them. when he’s in big danger he can call on a holy god beam from the sky to burn his enemies but it hurts him to be around because of his demon half.

Number one wish: he wants to rid the world of darkness like him, and find someone he can be close to without scaring away. he truly believes there is a female out there who will save him from the demon inside.

6/28/2005

Name: Dracusis Demonflame Blackthorne

Nickname (if any): His human name is Kyle, because he wants to be as boring as possible so other demonkin don’t come looking for him.

Age: Unknown, looks like a young human male but is much older.

Gender: Male

Height: He is five feet, eight inches tall. This is a normal height for demonkin, but humans give him lots of poo poo for being short.

Weight: He doesn’t weigh himself very often but he likes to maintain a body shape that hides his true power. On the outside he looks like a chubby guy but few know the power he keeps within...

Hair color: In his Kyle form, it is boring brown. In his demon form, it is a long black mane that swirls around his body like a cape, but doesn’t get in the way while he fights.

Eye color: In Kyle form he also has boring brown eyes, they’re the color of a particularly brown puddle of mud. In demon form his eyes are black with red pinpricks in them. They re capable of showing great emotions as well, even though they look frightening to humans.

Preferred style of clothing: As Kyle he has trouble keeping a job or staying in a place to live because people sense the darkness inside him and stay away. So as a human he dresses in sweatpants, ratty jeans, whatever he can find. As a demon all his clothes mostly tear away except for around his groin.

Piercings/tattoos/scars/etc: As Kyle, he has numerous scars from cutting himself to hold off his demon form. If he sacrifices enough of his demonic blood between full moons, he’s able to resist transforming into a demon except for in instances of extreme rage, such as when he’s in a fight. In his demon form he is covered in ornate designs that represent his demonic magic.

Family (if any): Long ago his father, a demon, had an affair with an angel, his mother. As she was a descendent of the seraphim and had angelic blood, her son (dracusis/kyle) was half demon and an unknown percentage angel. This was just enough to prevent him from going full evil like his father. His father realized this one day and flew into a rage, destroying his mother’s earthly body and banishing her to the celestial realm. Kyle/Dracusis was left alone on Earth and there were many temptations by the dark side to lure him over becuase of his powerful angel/demon blood. He is trapped in the middle of his heritage.

Spouse/significant other (if any): Females seem to detect the demon darkness inside of him. A few have seen his demonic form and find it attractive but he cannot love them or enjoy them in that form because the demon rage takes over. As Kyle, he tries to get close to women, but they are unimpressed by his human disguise.

Friends (if any): he has one friend, Raven Lillithsdaughter. She is a demonkin like him and has to also cut herself to keep from going into a demon rage. Kyle/Dracusis thinks that Raven understands him better than any being in any world, but they’ve agreed they are too close friends to get romantic. And if they had kids they would probably make another demonkin which they both agree is immoral.

Place of birth: Unknown. His mother didn’t like to talk about it when she was on Earth.

Current place of residence: currently he is on the run from his father, so he has to move around a lot. His base of operations is usually Raven’s house where she lets him sleep on the couch. He likes staying at Raven’s house because she’s dark like him but they can sit up and talk about things all night. Sometimes they have breakfast in the morning. It’s generally a lot better than the other random places he has to crash. Most people don’t get him so they don’t let him stay around for long.

Favorite food: he considers such things trite.

Least favorite food: see above.

Magical powers (if any): Can transform into a powerful and physically appealing demon when threatened or when he hasn’t shed enough of his demon blood. His body is covered in intricate magical knotwork that enhances his strength, speed, and resilience. When he’s in deep peril, he can call on his mother to intercede from the celestial realm, but exposure to divine power causes him excruciating pain.

Number one wish: To get revenge on his father and find someone who can widthstand his darkness...

Nickname (if any): He mostly goes by Sterling, because his first name is boring.

Age: 20

Gender: Male

Height: He is a stocky 5’8, but he carries it well, like a celtic warrior. People frequently assume he’s insecure about his height, which is a source of great comedy for Sterling.

Weight: About 230 pounds, a lot of which is muscle. He’s surprisingly agile for his size, but few are willing to overlook that he doesn’t have the obvious sixpack or biceps.

Hair color: He dyes it black, to make it less blond, like his mother’s. Anything that reminds him of her ticks him off big time.

Eye color: He wears boring brown contact lenses to cover up his intensely red eyes, which he got from his father. He’s not ashamed of his eyes, but they tend to make other feel uneasy.

Preferred style of clothing: Sterling despises the civilization that forces him to care about his appearance to the point of agonizing over which textiles to put on his body. He recognizes that most fashion and cosmetics are simply part of the mating dance between males and females. His peers tend to describe him as unfashionable, but he just quietly laughs at them and their conformity. What few preferences Sterling has about clothing mostly have to do with comfort and utility, so he spends a lot of time wearing cargo pants or sweatpants. He knows these aren’t the most attractive options, but he refuses to be part of the mindless humping and grinding of fashionable individuals.

Piercings/tattoos/scars/etc: Sterling has many scars. He used to feel a tremendous guilt for the circumstances of his brith and took it out on himself. The cutting made him feel like he was giving back to the world, somehow, with every crimson drop that spilled from his veins. He also has large swaths of hyperpigmentation from a condition he inherited from his mother, giving his body a mottled appearance. He thinks it looks sort of cool, but he’s had his whole life to get used to it. Usually he covered up the scars with long sleeve shirts, wrist bands, ect.

Family (if any): Family is a complicated subject for Sterling. For most of his life, he swore vengeance on his father for impregnating his mother and then abandoning them both. He lived with his grandparents for a while, but then his mother came and retrieved him and told him the story about his dad’s unfaithfulness. He believed this for a long time, until she disappeared and he was left in his father’s care. His father proceeded to tell him the truth, that his mother never wanted a baby but was using Sterling to try to entrap Sterling’s dad in a relationship. She left when she couldn’t get her way, then tried to come back and once again use Sterling as emotional leverage against his father. He spent the rest of his formative years learning how to hold his own in the world and how to avoid the wiles of manipulative females. His father has a heritage leading back to ancient pre-christian daemons, which is where they get their signature red eyes.

Spouse/significant other (if any): To put it simply, Sterling doesn’t trust his heart to a woman. He finds their bodies attractive, but few of them seem inclined to look past his darkness and exterior and see through to the loving parts of him. He believes they see men as sources of food, shelter, and babies.

Friends (if any): He once knew a girl called Raven, a descendent of daemons like himself. She came from a bad family, too, and was the only female Sterling thought was trustworthy. They would cut themselves together and talk about their family histories. Sterling would constantly throw his darkness in her face because he wanted her to keep reaching through and pulling him out of it. But eventually she got tired of always dealing with his dark side and left.

Place of birth: He doesn’t know because anything his mother told him is probably a lie.

Current place of residence: He currently resides in his father’s lair, where they get by on odd jobs. They have to lay low because Sterling doesn’t want his mom to try to reach out to him again and spread more of her lies. The lair is kind of a training ground for other daemon-types. Lots of men come there and drink and fight and generally do the sorts of things Sterling never felt his mother would let him do.

Magical powers (if any): Sterling Dark lives in a time where magic is mostly dead. Because of his connection to the ancient daemons, he is able to manipulate small events, which makes him seem lucky in card and video games, as well as an exceptionally good driver. He’s also extremely good at being elusive, first from spending his youth trying to hide from his father, then spending his young adult years trying to shake off his mother.

Number one wish: To spread his darkness to those whom would inflict pain upon him...

7/15/2016

Name: Ky Silverclaw

Nickname (if any): Ky, Sil, Silver

Age: 22 in human years

Gender: Omega (male pronouns)

Height: About 5 foot five--pretty tall for a quadruped standing on its hind legs!

Weight: He’s a big doggy, think more samoyed than chihuahua XD

Hair color: Primary fur color is black, with a silver stripe going down his back and silver tips on their his ears. His flanks are decorated with swirling patterns that he was born with. NOTE: asking him about the origin of his marks is a HUGE no-no. If you try to push him to talk about his past, the RP will be over and he’ll probably block you. Everything he’s willing to share is in the ‘family’ section below.

Eye color: Nearly black, but they glint slightly silver in sun and moonlight. Some people tell him his eyes are his best feature, but he brushes that off. He’s not into appearances, his own or other people’s. Mostly he just wishes people would keep thoughts about each other’s appearances to themselves.

Preferred style of clothing: He prefers to let his fur feel the brush of the wind, the gentle fingers of the bushes he bounds through when he’s in ‘feral’ mode. He has sex organs but does not see them as anything to be ashamed of, or indeed anything to be particularly excited about. He sees his genitals the way other people see their elbow. When he is within the hypocritical, purito-promiscuous bounds of society, he prefers loose sweatpants and a plain t-shirt. These things adequately cover his body while not making any accidental statement of sexual intention.

Piercings/tattoos/scars/etc: When he was a young pup, he would gnaw at his forelimbs until they bled. To this day, his fur is patchy there because of the scars.

Family (if any): Ky does not like to talk about his family, but here is what you may as well know about him so you don’t feel the need to ask: Ky’s mother (a celestial wolf) and father (an infernal coyote) had a brief, adulterous tryst which was never supposed to conceive a child. Ky’s father immediately regretted the tryst and attempted to sever from Ky’s mother. He succeeded until she discovered she was pregnant; she brought this news to him hoping that he would end his marriage and be with her. After attempting to make things work for a couple years, Ky’s parents abandoned him to be raised by his grandparents, then attempted to go back to their own lives. Eventually his mother, overcome by guilt, took him back in and tried to teach him the ways of celestial magic, but by then Ky’s heart had hardened to her. After a difficult few years, he left to go live with his father, who spun a very different version of events and enabled Ky’s hatred of his mother. Ky learned much of the infernal magics from his father, but in the end, decided he had to go his own way. To this day, his body bears the marks of his duel heritage, and every time he looks in the mirror, he sees the irresponsible people who brought him into the world.

Spouse/significant other (if any): Ky prefers platonic relationships where there is all of the emotional closeness and none of the physical. His ideal life partner would be someone who respected his boundaries but also understood his need to be impregnated in the tail-hole. For him, omega pregnancy is not a sexual thing; there is merely the satisfaction of using a unique part of his body for its unique purpose. Such couplings would be rare (by necessity XD ) and entirely non-erotic in nature. For these reasons, Ky generally has platonic friendships.

Friends (if any): Most of his friends are other omegas like him, people who understand the ins and outs of having a uniquely capable body. He has trouble trusting alphas, betas, and generally anyone who is non-omega. He once had a human female friend with whom he might’ve developed romantic feelings, but they were too good of friends and went through too much darkness together. She has since drifted away.

Place of birth: In between the realms of the celestial and infernal, suspended between good and evil...

Current place of residence: He lives in FoxSwap’s Omega Den and loves every minute of being able to commune with his fellow omegas. Alphas are strictly screened!

Favorite food: He doesn’t have any until he’s butt-preggo, then he loves seasalt-coated chickpeas and chocolates with chili powder on them. Or whatever weird flavor combo his brain comes up with XD

Least favorite food: Cooked peas. Mushy peas is pea abuse.

Magical powers (if any): He has all the benefits of being an omega (self-lube, mpreg, knot) BUT he actually doesn’t particularly enjoy or use them. More interesting are the opposing magics within his body--celestial and infernal. With these he can heal, commune with the dead, and do divination as well as shoot balls of energy-fire and weave spells of deception around his enemies. The healing magics help with his rare pregnancies.

Number one wish: To find someone who will lovingly and platonically put a baby in his tail-hole. Also, peace on Earth and good will to all